Searching for Optical Transients in Real-Time: The RAPTOR Experiment

Abstract

A rich, but relatively unexplored, region in optical astronomy is the study of transients with durations of less than a day. We describe a wide‐field optical monitoring system, RAPTOR, which is designed to identify and make follow‐up observations of optical transients in real‐time. The system is composed of an array of telescopes that continuously monitor about 1500 square degrees of the sky for transients down to about 12th magnitude in 60 seconds and a central fovea telescope that can reach 16th magnitude in 60 seconds. Coupled to the telescope array is a real‐time data analysis pipeline that is designed to identify transients on timescales of seconds. In a manner analogous to human vision, the entire array is mounted on a rapidly slewing robotic mount so that the fovea of the array can be rapidly directed at transients identified by the wide‐field system. The goal of the project is to develop a ground‐based optical system that can reliably identify transients in real‐time and ultimately generate alerts with source locations to enable follow‐up observations with other, larger, telescopes.